WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Irevi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 1: Tower of Trials

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Ten years ago, the world literally turned upside down.

Mysterious monsters began appearing all over the world and attacking people, while equally mysterious towers started growing at the same time.

The sudden towers were one thing, but the flood of monsters posed a threat humanity couldn't handle.

Creatures so dangerous they made elephants, supposedly the strongest animals on land, look like a joke came pouring out by the hundreds and thousands. How the hell were people supposed to deal with that?

Of course, humanity's firepower could easily suppress most ordinary monsters, but the real problem was that some of them weren't ordinary.

Monsters unaffected by firearms, monsters with bizarre abilities, monsters that were simply fucking huge and ridiculously strong, and so on.

Cities across the world were destroyed, and countless people were killed or injured. Humanity was steadily losing its place in the world.

Then one day, people with superhuman power began appearing and taking down monsters.

They were commonly called Awakened back then, and Hunters now. The towers that had sprung up around the world had spat them out.

They were people who accepted invitations from the Tower of Trials, risking their lives to clear it and become Hunters.

Of course, that was all in the past now.

The world became considerably safer thanks to the first-generation Hunters who suddenly appeared, and invitations that periodically abducted people became a chance for people like me to turn our lives around.

The Tower of Trials had been an extremely dangerous place in its early days, somewhere you truly had to risk your life to conquer. But now that the methods for clearing each floor had been established, it wasn't quite so bad.

There were even so-called Rankers who stayed in the Tower of Trials long-term to gain more power, so it was possible to safely ride a "bus" all the way to the hundredth floor.

That was why a broke, unemployed loser like me had entered the Tower of Trials without hesitation.

I didn't need to risk my life. If I rode a Ranker bus and got carried all the way through, I could still become a low-rank Hunter.

Even taking down weak monsters here and there as a low-rank Hunter could earn decent money. I'd also heard that manual labor paid incredibly well when you had a Hunter's physical abilities.

And if I happened to find a hidden piece along the way, that would be a real turnaround. Why wouldn't I take a safe gamble with good odds?

But what the fuck was this?

[Tower of Trials #2661 (1/1)]

This blue interface was the chat channel attached to each individual Tower of Trials.

People who received invitations were transported to nearby towers based on their country and area of residence. The number 2661 was the unique number of the tower I'd been sent to, like its address.

Then what did the (1/1) beside it mean? It represented the number of people connected to the chat channel. One person connected, one person total.

In other words, I was alone in Tower of Trials #2661. No Ranker to carry me, no companions to fight beside me... completely alone.

At first, I couldn't believe it, so I spent a long time fiddling with the interface, including the chat channel, searching for other people.

But there was no one. Even when I asked in the Open Community shared by every Tower of Trials user, no other Challengers appeared for Tower #2661.

In the same tower that the first-generation Hunters had challenged with their lives on the line, there was only me.

My life was completely fucked.

* * *

The Tower of Trials was called a tower, but it was really closer to a massive otherworld.

Each floor was its own world. A hundred-floor tower meant a hundred worlds, with multiple dungeons and villages on every floor.

Challengers traveled through the dungeons and hunting grounds on each floor, defeating monsters, leveling up, gaining skills and stats, and growing stronger.

It was a very straightforward RPG. Naturally, I had the so-called Status Window too.

"Status Window."

I didn't need to say it out loud, but there was nobody around to hear me, so I muttered it anyway and brought up my Status Window.

Seo Jinhyeok Lv.1 (Unemployed)

HP: 100/100

MP: 100/100

Strength: 1

Agility: 1

Durability: 1

Intelligence: 1

Every stat sat at the bare minimum, without an extra point anywhere. It was the same for every Challenger.

No matter how strong you were before entering the Tower of Trials, your Strength was 1. Likewise, no matter how smart you were, your Intelligence was 1.

So Intelligence being 1 didn't mean I was stupid. That stat had nothing to do with actual intelligence in the first place.

The (Unemployed) beside my level was the same deal. It wasn't because I was an unemployed bum. Everyone was Unemployed before choosing a class.

Raise Strength, and you got stronger. Raise Agility, and you got faster. Raise Durability, and you got tougher.

Every stat gained here was added directly to my original abilities.

That applied even now, with my stats at 1. I was currently one point stronger and more agile than before I entered the Tower of Trials.

I couldn't actually feel it, but that was what other Challengers had figured out.

I'd already known that from the information posted in the Open Community and from what I'd heard before entering the Tower of Trials.

Even so, I opened my Status Window to check because I wondered if I might have some special privilege.

"Fuck, would giving me an Epic Class really hurt?"

I thought being alone in the tower might give me some kind of benefit, but apparently not.

I really had to clear this tower alone, as a level 1 piece of worthless trash with nothing.

My plan to proudly become a Hunter and let my mom, who'd suffered so much, finally live in comfort had already fallen completely apart.

Yeah. I'd been born poor, and I was poor as a Hunter too.

How could my life be so consistently fucked?

* * *

Still, no matter what, everything depended on how you handled it.

Who knew? Maybe I had some incredible hidden talent and could really clear the tower by myself.

Or maybe a hidden piece meant just for me was waiting somewhere. Surely my life wasn't completely fucking ruined.

So I left the village and headed for the hunting grounds, figuring I'd start by hunting whatever monster I could find.

"Uh... that's a Horned Rabbit, right?"

I gripped the Wooden Sword in my right hand as I watched a large white rabbit roaming the field map.

The Open Community for the Tower of Trials had well-organized early-game guides and strategies for newbie Challengers.

They said it was safest not to enter the Labyrinth Area at level 1. Instead, you should head into the fields and hunt Horned Rabbits until you reached level 3.

Apparently, even if you were getting carried by Rankers, you could die from one wrong step before level 3.

-Boing, boing.

The Horned Rabbit really did look like a rabbit with a horn. Its body was nearly the size of a large dog, though.

It wasn't grotesquely ugly like the huge rabbits that lived in Australia. It had an adorable appearance, just scaled up to a stupid size.

Its jumping ability matched its size too. It could leap higher than my head.

-Boing, boing.

It looked pretty threatening even just hopping around, but it was supposedly the weakest monster, one even a level 1 could kill... so I could handle it, right?

Holding my basic-issue Wooden Sword, I slowly approached the Horned Rabbit.

Horned Rabbits were non-aggressive mobs that only hopped around unless attacked. That meant I could put everything I had into the first blow.

"Hyah!"

I brought the Wooden Sword down on the forehead of the hopping Horned Rabbit. Maybe that one point of Strength really did help, because the swing had more force than I'd expected.

-Cheep!

The Horned Rabbit let out a cute cry after getting smacked in the forehead and rolled onto the ground. I walked up to it and swung my Wooden Sword again.

-Thud, thud, thud!

It felt like there should've been a louder sound when I hit it this hard, but maybe it was because of the fur. It only sounded like I was beating a pillow.

Still, the damage seemed to be registering properly. The Horned Rabbit couldn't put up much resistance as I beat the hell out of it.

-Whiiine...

After I hit it a few more times, the Horned Rabbit made a slightly different cry and disappeared in a flash of light.

[Horned Rabbit Pelt]

The loot entered my inventory. It seemed one Horned Rabbit wasn't enough to level me up, even at level 1.

Still, this was way more manageable than I'd expected. I wondered whether it made any sense to beat an animal that big to death with a Wooden Sword, but the stat bonuses seemed to make it possible somehow.

Even after swinging the Wooden Sword so many times, I wasn't out of breath. Maybe the bonuses affected my stamina too, not just my strength.

At this rate, I thought I could do it.

* * *

After that, I took down eight more Horned Rabbits.

They were non-aggressive mobs, so as long as I picked one and kept hitting it, I could kill it without getting counterattacked.

Thanks to that, I leveled up too. I was level 2 now, and every stat had increased by 1, bringing them all to 2.

I hadn't really noticed much with all my stats at 1, but with them all at 2, I could definitely feel that I was stronger.

Was this what it felt like to tangibly grow? I felt a sense of satisfaction I'd never felt while loafing around at home as an unemployed... I mean, job-seeking bum.

"Okay, maybe I'll kill one more and head back to the village..."

Since I was already at it, I picked out another white Horned Rabbit hopping around. I might as well make it ten.

"Hyah!"

With a spirited shout, I smacked the Horned Rabbit on the head. With the basic Wooden Sword's attack power, I could reliably kill one in around eleven hits.

-Cheep! Cheep! Cheeeep...!

I kept beating the Horned Rabbit as it squealed pathetically. Just when I thought it was almost dead, my Wooden Sword made a strange sound.

-Crack.

Its Durability had run out. It happened as I swung the final blow at the Horned Rabbit.

Crack. The Horned Rabbit collapsed, the loot entered my inventory, and my Wooden Sword shattered at the same time.

"It breaks right after I kill exactly ten?"

I put the broken Wooden Sword into my inventory, clicked my tongue, and headed toward the village.

That was when I saw something strange in the distance. It was another Horned Rabbit that looked exactly like the one I'd just defeated.

The odd thing was that its fur was black. Weren't Horned Rabbits all white?

-Boing, boing, boing!

Unlike the white rabbits, the Black Horned Rabbit ran a little faster. It felt less like it was hopping and more like it was sprinting.

I opened the Open Community to see whether the guide mentioned something like that, but the Black Horned Rabbit that had been far away was suddenly close.

No, that wasn't it.

It wasn't simply getting closer. That Black Horned Rabbit was running straight at me.

"What the fuck?"

The moment I realized it, the Black Horned Rabbit swiftly closed the distance and hurled its entire body at me.

"Ghk!"

Footnotes:

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